Make the mistake of asking Cerys Matthews what she’s up to at the moment and you won’t get a word in edgeways for the next ten minutes.

An award winning broadcaster, musician and songwriter, literary judge and now festival curator, Cerys is a busy lady but one riding the crest of a creative wave if her radio show on BBC 6Music is anything to go by.

Cerys began broadcasting in 2008 and has been presenting her own show on Sunday mornings since the birth of her third child in 2010.

The programme is famously eclectic – and this year won a Sony Award – and the 44-year-old Welsh presenter is justly proud.

“The radio show has been incredibly well received and hugely successful,” she says.

“It’s got five times bigger since we started and I’m so pleased because it took a lot of convincing people that the listeners shouldn’t be sterotyped.”

Spinning old timey, soul, rock, reggae, jazz and blues songs, Cerys is also happy to throw in poetry and a Sunday Recipe for those who love cooking and I speak from experience when I say it’s a perfect hangover cure.

“I get that from a lot of people,” she laughs.

“With the internet we can now access music in all different languages from all over the world and different styles. More so now than ever, the casual music fan enjoys a wide palette of colours music-wise.

“The only styles which are not particularly my cup of tea are really intense techno and death metal. They probably wouldn’t work on a Sunday morning show but nothing else is out of bounds.”

So diverse are her various interests, it’s easy to forget Cerys’s own musical career that began over 20 years ago with Britpop heroes Cataonia.

The Welsh band hit big in the late 1990s with tunes like Mulder and Scully and Road Rage as well as the perennial winter favourite, Baby it’s Cold Outside.

Splitting in 2001, Cerys went on to release her first solo album, Cockahoop, in May 2003. Her second album Never Said Goodbye was released in August 2006 and in November 2007 she released a mini-album of Welsh language songs Awyren=Aeroplane and is currently working on an album of music and poetry by Dylan Thomas.

Despite still being best known for wild days in Cataonia, Cerys is far happier looking forward than getting all nostalgic.

“I don’t really look back because I find if you look backwards you bump into things and what I get to do now is incredible.

“I was only 19 when Cataonia started and we worked really hard and travelled the world throughout our twenties.

“I’m so happy that we made songs that a lot of people enjoyed but I’m not ready yet to go one of those TV shows looking back at the 90s. There’s too many exciting things going on now.”

As if she wasn’t busy enough Cerys has now created a brand new cultural festival , ‘The Good Life Experience’, which launches in September at Hawarden Estate in Flintshire.

As well as watching Cerys perform, festival goers can learn to throw an axe or fire an arrow, cook on a campfire with Tom Herbert of The Fabulous Baker Brother, abseil, learn how to make sausages or skin a rabbit. So what’s the idea behind the event?

“We’re in a world where we are bombarded with pressures to buy things and I’m quite old fashioned in that I want somewhere where the machine can’t touch which is what the radio show is about in many ways,” says Cerys.

“It’s about the simple pleasures like learning new things and sharing things which are free.

“That’s why I’ve started my own festival - I’ve got people teaching things like butchery skills and how to make a camp fire - all of these traditions that we are getting far away from.

“It’s the antithesis of my life to spend a lot of money on shoes or a handbag. That’s alien to me because the most pleasure you can get is watching your child making a wooden stall or a sausage or shooting an arrow or abseiling.

“You shouldn’t have to think you have to just work work work in order to buy something that really has no value at all.”

As for her headline show in Southport, Cerys is looking forward to getting back on stage.

“It’s basically a set of music that I adore.,” she adds.

“My love of music crosses a huge range of genres and eras so expect the unexpected!”

The Southport Visiter has a pair of tickets for Cerys’s gig at The Atkinson on Friday, August 1.

To be in with a chance of winning, tell us the name of Catatonia’s 1998 album that reached number one in the UK charts? Send your answers to Southport Visiter, 26-32 Tulketh Street, Southport PR8 1BT by Wednesday, July 30.